


Meditation I: Lead stick

by brittlestars



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-27 07:22:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21388294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brittlestars/pseuds/brittlestars
Summary: Even after all these years, the echo of Stick's hands is heavy.
Relationships: Matt Murdock & Stick
Comments: 3
Kudos: 18
Collections: Daredevil Bingo





	Meditation I: Lead stick

Stick's hands were heavy.

This was one of the first things Matt learned.

He learned it so deeply he could feel it in his bones.

Even after all these years, he can still feel it in his bones.

It was not just the coarse calluses. It wasn't just the thick nails. There was lead in his palms. Lead in his words. Matt was certain he'd never get that lead out of his soul.

He remembered heavy hands on his shoulders. The hands grounded him, kept him in place. The hands corrected his posture. Spine straight. Open breathing. Eyes shut. Stop shivering already.

Before Stick, Matt had developed a habit of hiding in himself. Looking inward was just about the only way to shut out the flood of information. But it was easy to get lost.

Stick had taught him balance in more ways than one. How to look inward to still his breathing and to sort through all the inputs. They had begun with discrete simple stimuli, learning to focus on one thing at a time, for Matt to hold his attention on the smallest mote, the faintest puff of air, the tracest scent. 

Stick would never let him tune out the pain. White hot and sharp or dull and throbbing, it was his teacher's finest teaching tool. 

Stick taught him to repair his own body by paying attention, by looking inward, by feeling every inch and spark of pain. 

Matt knew and could trace the hair-like neurons that carried the signals throughout his body. Incoming sound, onrushing sensation, the ever-present background hum and rumble of the city he loved. Outgoing commands, the faintest twitch trained and steadied, honed and precise.

To dive inward was to dance with the devil. Matt could become just as lost inside himself as in the roar of the outside world. 

But with hard-won patience under Stick's heavy hands Matt learned. He could navigate his inner world through heat and sound, touch and smell, balance, pressure, and pain.

Meditation was a delving into himself, into a world that was dark not just for lack of light. That was stark not just for lack of luxury.

The ticking of an internal clock, no longer set by light but still a perfect rhythm. 

Sorting through each separate feeling was like untangling threads: each a different color and texture, the sinews and fibers of his physical being. And then, holding in his mind's eye - far, far more perceptive than Before -- he could learn to manipulate these threads. Re-weave them. Remake the tapestry that was his body.

At first for child it was mind-numbingly boring. But the lead in Stick's hands did not allow for boredom, at least not the boredom that wandered into stray thoughts, unattended emotions, idleness, or lack of discipline.

As an adult, Matt wonders if this re-weaving with glowing threads and sparkling strands was a small creation unto itself. God had granted each person the ability to create life.

But man could not remake the gifts sculpted by God. No matter how hard he tried, no matter how tightly he focused, there were no signals coming from the pits of his eyes. The two empty open gaping dead holes at the center of everything he had been. Before. Before the accident, before his father's murder, before Stick, before the world on fire and the burden of Guilt like lead. Before he became something less, and something so very much more.

Now he can feel up to the very edges of his eyes, every wrinkle and air current, every fine vellus hair and speck of dust. The world rushes in a flood of information and Stick had taught him what to do with that information.

His knuckles are long past complaining, but are a reminder, still, of pain. They echo the pain he brings to others. Pain is a tool, he heard Stick say. The pain of others has become his choice tool. The work of pain makes the city better. The work of pain distracts him from himself. 

He is a state machine. He is a feedback loop. And with each fine-tuned adjustment, he can watch with all of his senses to see just how to make himself better. A better weapon, Stick would say. Fuck him. 

Even crouched motionless on this rooftop in the wind, he wanders inside himself. It is a tangled, wild, living landscape, flush with creeping vines and lurking aches. He feels crossed between gardener and lion tamer, half-expecting the Devil to spring from the bushes and push him toward further, ill-advised action. Half-expecting, and half-hoping. 

His focus is ripped outward as a noise cuts through his filters. A child is crying in the distance. They are alone, and afraid. 

The pain overpowers his fear, and Daredevil leaps into the night.

**Author's Note:**

> For the Daredevil bingo prompt "meditation."


End file.
